About Channel Classics

The perfect combination of sound and performance.

Channel Classics Records is a quality record label based in Holland. Director, producer and recording engineer is Jared Sacks. Having grown up in Boston Massachusetts, schooled at Oberlin Conservatory and the Amsterdam Conservatory of music with 15 years experience playing French Horn, Jared decided to make his hobby of recording a profession in 1987. The label started in 1990 with the name Channel Classics coming from the street he lived on in Amsterdam. (Kanaalstraat).

Jared, his Dutch wife Lydi Groenewegen and two other staff members work closely with distributors in 30 countries to promote the artists through the recordings as CDs and Downloads (from mp3 all the way up to Direct Stream Digital – the original master file of the DSD recording).

Label of the Year

In September 2015, Gramophone awarded Channel Classics “Label of the Year”!

A tribute by Gramophone’s Editor and Publisher Martin Cullingford:

In the 25 years since Channel Classics was founded by its devoted Managing Director Jared Sacks, the recording landscape has changed radically. Where once majors reigned supreme and indies carved a niche in terms of repertoire, artists or market, now the distinction between the two, so far as collectors are concerned, is not so clear-cut. The most discerning among the indies – and this year’s winner is certainly one – nurture a hand-picked roster of brilliant artists, just as majors have always done, giving them the support to explore the repertoire they most excel in, and allowing them to take risks. Reaping the rewards of this kind of approach are, fundamentally, the listeners.

Foremost stars among those on Channel Classics’ roster include British violinist Rachel Podger and Hungarian conductor Iván Fischer. Podger’s every disc reveals an artist who effortlessly combines intelligent attention to detail, virtuosic brilliance and a thrilling joy in music-making. This year saw her recording of Vivaldi’s L’estro armonicoshortlisted in the Baroque Instrumental category, having already claimed Recording of the Month in April 2015; in his review, Lindsay Kemp wrote: ‘There is probably no more inspirational musician working today.’

To Podger and Fischer can be added a host of less- well-known artists – Rosanne Philippens and the Ragazze Quartet are two such who have fared well in Gramophone – while a completely unexpected and delightful disc of works for trumpet and trombone called ‘Tintomara’ (an Editor’s Choice in June) showed off Channel Classics at its imaginative best. All in all, it’s been a very fine year to crown an impressive quarter-century for this year’sGramophone Label of the Year.

Fischer, meanwhile, has steadily built his Budapest Festival Orchestra into one of today’s most impressive ensembles, regularly releasing recordings which stand proudly in the company of orchestras of much older vintage and fame. His Mahler Ninth was an Editor’s Choice in our June issue, and a closing remark by critic David Gutman – ‘The Channel Classics issue (with surround-sound option) is in a very special class, a sonic dazzler’ – gets us to the heart of one of the label’s greatest strengths: Sacks’s audiophile commitment to sound quality, and to exploiting the possibilities of new and improved recording formats to lend the most vivid listening experience he can to his carefully prepared, painstakingly recorded releases.

Jared Sacks Knighted by Dutch King

Music has always been a passion for Jared Sacks. Now a Dutch-U.S. dual citizen, that passion has led him all over the world and earned him a recent knighthood in the Netherlands. King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands knighted Sacks for his contribution to classical music through his record label Channel Classics Records in 2015.